LAUGHING 

 WATERS 



There are days when the sea is austere and un- 

 approachable, when its mood is too lofty and 

 severe. But the pond, fringed with alders and 

 button-bushes, smiles in the sunshine and is 

 friendly and inviting. It is more on the level of 

 our every-day thought. Not always are we con- 

 soled by the vast and sublime, and we crave even 

 more the companionable and social aspects of 

 Nature. Grim though the surroundings of granite 

 ledge and somber pines, the nestling pond is win- 

 some, notwithstanding. Never forbidding, never 

 altogether distant in its mood, even though frozen, 

 it is a cheerful and alluring personality to which 

 we are drawn from afar. 



About a pond as about a mountain there is a kind 

 of magnetism. A new field of discovery, there is 

 ever the hope that from a new scene we shall 

 gain a fresh impression. Every pond holds out 

 this possibility and invites exploration of its shores, 

 as if there were the promised land. But over and 

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